I have argued in Distorted Truths, that the Greeks, Hebrews, and Romans, all borrowed Afrikan ideas, bastardizing them, primarily removing or attacking the divine feminine, producing their misogynistic patriarchal doctrines. Passover, or Pesach is an important Biblically-derived Jewish festival. Its celebration commemorates their liberation over 3,300 years ago by Jehovah from enslavement in Kemet and their birth as a nation under the leadership of Moses. It commemorates their Exodus. But as an Afrikan historian, according to available, verifiable data, this celebration and the events associated with it, are not historical as much as mythological. (Simon Magus, considered the founder of Gnosticism, offered an esoteric interpretation for the Exodus, using the reproductive metaphor: He claims that the Exodus signifies the passage out of the womb, and that ‘the crossing of the Red Sea refers to the blood.’ In other words, it symbolically signifies the birth or genesis of the Hebrews.) The idea of this supposed Exodus was even challenged in antiquity. Two Kemeyu (Egyptians), Apion and Mer-en-Jehuti argued that there were two exoduses from Kemet: One by defeated Hyksos and their sympathizers who retreated to Jerusalem; and another that consisted of a group of dissenters (religious-Atenists) led by a Kemetic priest named Osarsiph, who became known as Meses (Moses). This, according to them was the historical basis and foundation of Judaism. Jewish historian of the first century C.E., Flavius Josephus in an essay entitled Contra Apionem (Against Apion), attempted to refute their accounts. Many writers since then have echoed the claims of the two Kemeyu.According to Gerald Massey, Passover — which symbolized on one level, the angel of death “passing over” the Goshen homes of the Israelites smeared with the sacrificial blood of a lamb — was a mythological allegory based on the precessional Age of Amen (Aries). On another level, he contends, it symbolized the sun “passing over” the vernal equinox at spring, having the same astrological meaning as the Crossifition, today widely called the Crucifixion. Nevertheless, both levels were astronomical references based on Kemetic astro-mythological symbols. Nisan is the first month of the Judaic calendar, which corresponds to March, the month of the vernal equinox, the original month in which Pasch or Passover occurred.

Reverend Edward H. Sugden in Israel’s Debt to Egypt highlights many cultural features the Hebrews borrowed from Kemet. Besides circumcision, he documents that seven of the ten commandments are found in the Declarations of Innocence and can also be found in other Kemetic wisdom literature such as the Teaching of Ptahhotep and the Maxims of Ani. Sugden demonstrates that from its language to its sacred texts, Judaism borrowed from Kemet. To begin with, its founder, Moses, was a native Kemau and follower of Atenism. Since Moses was a Kemau, it is reasonable to expect that he imparted his traditions and beliefs to his followers. The following are examples: Judaism embraced Atenism’s stress on monotheism; celebrated the Kemetic seasonal rite of the vernal equinox (Passover); adopted circumcision; derived nine of its ten commandments from Kemet (seven from the Declarations of Innocence and two from Atenism); copied Old Testament verses almost verbatim from Kemetic literature; modeled the Temple of Solomon and its Ark of the Covenant on the Temple of Karnak and the sacred ark to Amen-Ra. Sugden supposes the first, second and fourth commandments are original Judaic contributions. However, after examining Atenism we see the likely origins of the first and second commandments: Aten was the only God (the first commandment) and had no graven image (the second commandment). Therefore, the only commandment we can attribute wholly to Judaism, is the fourth, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” In Hebrew literary style and literature we find a heavy Kemetic influence. Apart from obvious borrowing in folklore from Sumerians and Assyrians, the Hebrews in their lyric poetry, their wisdom literature, and Psalms, were deeply indebted to Kemet. Biblical Psalms were copied from Akhenaten’s Hymns to Aten.

Further Sugden argues that the Hebrew Scriptures assume and teach the following: (1) That the human soul continued to live when the body dies. (2) That the soul at death goes into . . . the invisible world . . . . (3) That it is well or ill with men after death according to the character of their life on earth. (4) That obedience to God’s commandments is tantamount to immortality. (5) That God will eventually bring both the quick and the dead into judgement before Him. (6) That by the divine preordination the terminus of human history will be the absolute catastrophe of evil, the complete triumph and ascendancy of the righteous government of God, and the perfect and everlasting bliss of all holy creatures. Excepting the last point, we can trace all of the above to Kemetic thought. This last point is clearly a northern cradle idea as it implies linear time (the terminus of human history), dichotomous thinking (good over evil) and a pessimistic worldview (the implied notion that earthly existence is endemically sorrowful).

Frankfort relates the Hebrew attitude as follows:

To Hebrew thought nature appeared void of divinity, and it was worse than futile to seek harmony with created life when obedience to thewill of the Creator could bring peace and salvation. God was not in sun and stars, rain and wind; they were his creatures and served him(Deut. 4: 19; Psalm 19). Every alleviation of the stern belief in God’s transcendence was corruption. In Hebrew religion — and in Hebrewreligion alone — the ancient bond between man and nature was destroyed. . . . Man remained outside nature.

The Lamb represent the Age of Amen

The point Frankfort makes is reminiscent of the point I made in my blog entitled, "Islam, Afrikans, and Arabs," on 3/26/13. This avowal of the divinity of nature, is anathema to Afrikan thought. As I stated, in Afrikan thought the Creator and Creation form the unicity we identify as the Supreme Being. By Judaism, like Arab Islam, denying the divinity of Creation, it is simply reinforcing the misogyny endemic to the area because the attack on nature is an attack on divine femininity. And if you disavow divine femininity will will disregard and disrespect earthly femininity, which among humans is most naturally expressed through women.

In Atenism, the Supreme Being’s transcendence (Creator) rather than his/her imminence (Creation) was venerated. Judaism embraced this concept, strenuously rejecting the idea that God was evident in Creation. This created a separation between the human being and Nature. Feeling no need to integrate man and Nature harmoniously, the Hebrews never developed divine kingship. Throughout the Book of Kings, the Hebrew priests and kings are often at odds, the former making accusations of the latter’s faithlessness to Yahweh. (Moses originally embodied the qualities of a divine king but these qualities were soon forgotten or abandoned.) These accusations were a reflection of their disharmonious worldview, one very different from the Afrikan who conceived of the unity of the person (the human being), society (culture) and Creation (Nature). Judaic dichotomous thought, like Arab Islam, negates real unity. The world becomes divided into sacred and profane domains--that of the Creator, and Creation. This schism was a by-product of the northern cradle’s alienating experiences in which the harsh climatic conditions created an opposition to the environment and produced a being with the inability to synthesize the self with the world.

Nigeria is notorious for its political corruption. From the inception of this modern nation-state there have been cases of official misuse of resources by its leadership for personal enrichment. In terms of corruption, Nigeria is ranked 139th out of 176 countries in Transparency International's 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index. The development of a governmental bureaucracy and the discovery of petroleum and natural gas are two reasons often cited as the cause of Nigeria's political corruption. Much of the nation's oil wealth that could have been used to raise the standards of living in Nigeria, have found its way into the pockets of both political and military leaders, leaving the average Nigerian in poverty. Obafemi Awolowo, a prominent politician stated that since independence, the Nigerian governments has been a matter of a few holding the cow for the strongest and most cunning to milk. This has created a "mentality in which everybody runs over everybody to make good at the expense of others." It would seem the spirit of communalism is dead in Nigeria, or for that matter, in most if not all of Afrika's borrowed political systems. This pervasive corruption has been blamed on colonialism, with the rationale being that throughout the colonial period, most Nigerians were stuck in ignorance and poverty. But more importantly, I would argue that the spiritual and cultural foundations of their society were shaken to the core during colonialism. (Moreover many societies had not recovered from the devastation of the slave trade.) Their traditional spiritual beliefs, which respected the seen and unseen forces of existence, were replaced with the spiritual materialism of European Christianity (and Arab Islam, to a lesser extent). Afrikans kept only the trappings of their cultural systems, mere survivals, while they embraced the values of their colonial masters. Afrikans wanted the material things Western society had to offer; its cars, townhouses, fashions, etc. Afrikans wanted to be like them—we wanted to be them!!! And so we borrowed all we could from them, even their political systems, and this included systemic corruption.

A brief look at Nigeria's history of corruption post-independence:

Azikiwe administration was marked by widespread corruption. Even he was not beyond reproach. Government officials looted public funds with impunity. Federal Representative and Minister of Aviation, KO Mbadiwe, flaunted his wealth by building a palace in his hometown. When asked where he had gotten the money to build such a mansion, KO replied, ”From sources known and unknown.”

In western Nigeria, politician Adegoke Adelabu was investigated following charges of political corruption leveled against him by the opposition. The report led to demand for his resignation as district council head.

In 1962, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was indicted and the Coker commission of enquiry was set-up which found that a substantial amount of money was misappropriated from the coffers of the Western regional government.

The Gowon's administration was mired in corruption, in 1975, a corruption scandal surrounding the importation of cement engulfed his administration. Many officials of the defense ministry and the central bank of Nigeria where involved in the scandal. Officials were later accused of falsifying ships manifest and inflating the amount of cement to be purchased. During the administration, two major individuals from the middle belt of the country were accused of corruption.

Corruption was deemed pervasive during the administration of Shagari.

A few federal buildings mysteriously went on fire after investigators started probes on the finances of the officials working in the buildings.

In 1981, a Rice shortage, led to accusations of corruption against the NPN government.

In 1985, investigations into the collapse of the defunct Johnson Mathey Bank of London showed the bank acted as a conduit to transfer hard currency for some party members in Nigeria. A few leading officials and politicians had amassed large amounts of money. They sought to transfer the money out of the country with the help of Asian importers by issuing import licenses.

In 1985, a cross section of political leaders were convicted of different corrupt practices under the government of General Buhari. However, the administration itself was involved in a few instances of lapsed ethical judgment.

Last Saturday my organization CPRReggae hosted the showing of the independent Jamaican film, Better Mus Come. I missed it because I arrived late from the Kemetic Conference in D.C., and the film had sold out. Last night we hosted it again at Raw Space in Harlem, and I got a chance to see it. (By the way it will be at Raw Space, until this Thursday.) I consider myself a “connoisseur” of independent black-themed films. To give you an ideas of my taste, some of my favorites are: Quilombo, Nothing But A Man, City of God, and Ceddo. Well you can add another one to that list: Better Must Come.Better Mus Come is a film that shows how cold war politics infected the Jamaican political landscape of the late 1970s. Political parties, acting as proxies for the superpowers, used existing local gangs to influence or determine election outcomes. The resulting corruption and political violence in the movie is projected through the lens of a love story. The movie works because of its simplicity: it is a very good story that has been built around a real historical event, specifically, the Green Bay Massacre. To its credit though the film never feels like a documentary. The story has good characters, who are not exaggerations, but real people—they act predictably yet are realistically portrayed. Most characters, whether they are agreeable or disagreeable, are portrayed with dignity; they act because of their material conditions and not simply motivated by egoist concerns. The effect is that you are watching real people that you can identify with, and you become engaged in the story. The story is also told without an ideological bias; you never find yourself vying for one political party or the other. Whether the writer, cinematographer, and director, Storm Saulter, is a JLP or PNP man, is unclear and is irrelevant. The movie follows the life of Ricky (Sheldon Shepard), an impoverished single father struggling to survive. He ekes out a living as a mason stealing cement from construction sites at night, and by stealing PNP ballot boxes during the day. Ricky meets Kemala (Nicole “Sky” Grey), a beautiful young woman, who lives in an area with strong PNP support. The two soon develop a deep love for each other—it does not manifest as typical Western romantic love, but as a deep-seated genuine concern-driven love--real love. Though Saulter does climax this love by way of a graphic, passionate sex scene, the movie never became fixated on their sexual passion but remained centered on the daily struggle of life in Jamaica. The love scene does, however, serve to deepen their relationship and commitment, because, it is after it, that Ricky reaches a crossroads: he gives his son to Kemala to nurture, with the hope that she will be the core of their family. Thus, subliminally, sex is the vehicle for life; not simply for its own sake or for gratification but for its procreative potential. The crossroads aspects is also reinforced by when they had sex; it was at a point that he confronted life itself—after he was shot. Did the movie make a subliminal association of “black” with “evil" by having the Jamaican Defence Force special forces undercover agent, the darkest person in the film be the person that perhaps evoked the most animosity? (He seemed to relish killing folks.) That would depend on whether you favored socialism or were supportive of the PNP, the legally-elected government party. If you did, then he becomes a force for righteousness, and not one for evil. So such an association of blackness with evil would be necessarily forced. The opposite, in fact, could be argued.The cinematography is very good. It presents the color and vibrancy of Jamaica. But it is not through the lens of a tourist but as a Jamaican; we see the beauty of the landscape as they see it. The angle of the camera shots are those of a well-schooled cinematographer; we never get the impression that he is trying out new amateurish techniques that don't work or that he is using overuse ones that are contrite and commonplace. The viewer feels he or she is part of the movie. In other words you realize the cinematography is good because you never questions the credulity of what you are viewing. The camera shot when Ras David intervene on behalf of the woman was great. You didn't know who was shot. On several occasions the director used the camera angle or cut-aways to enrapt and confuse the audience. It was done at the end of the movie with Ricky and Flames. The music also enhanced the film. I thought I was going to hear a lot of reggae period music. In fact, I thought the movie would be an advertisement for reggae and reggae artist of the time. But it wasn't. It was a movie that had a soundtrack that fit the various scenes and emotional timbre of the movie. It was like the soundtrack was made for the film, and not the inverse or that the film tried to fit the music to it. Now whether it can be sold as a soundtrack in its own right, I am not sure if it can. Aside from actor Roger Guenveur Smith, Saulter utilizes a cast of mostly local talent, often nonprofessional actors. But the movie does introduces two actors that gave notable performances, Sheldon Shepard and Nicole “Sky” Grey. Taking a note from Spike Lee, Saulter said some of the acting and dialogue was unscripted. I believe this is a technique that captured a realism that can't be scripted. Saulter also handled the protagonist in a interesting and realistic fashion. There is no hero-worshiping or standard ending to this movie, but a sort of pseudo-predestination implicit in the ending. Ricky's fate is reminiscent of the City of God's “Knockout Ned's, and perhaps with the same ethical justification.I thought the treatment of Rastafari was favorable but not over the top. The movie was not a “Rasta movie” but it presented the group as altruistic and spiritually-driven. The elders possessed calm serenity and wisdom. (And they smoked “big spliffs.”) Ricky is drawn to their spirituality but mired in his day to day existent. It is part of his dilemma; the crossroads at which he remained. The movie was very good, excellent even, and I highly recommend it. It speaks to the experience of Afrikan people struggling with their existence in a Western created, Eurocentric world, that is anti-Afrikan, anti-natal, anti damn-near everything except profit and exploitation. This film should be added to your film collection, placed right next to your other classics. It demonstrates the value of a good movie, and proves a good picture is worth more than a thousand words. We need more movies like this one--ones that tell our story, and speak our special truth.

The accounting of the financial cost of the nearly decade-long Iraq War will go on for years, but a recent analysis has shed light on the companies that made money off the war by providing support services as the privatization of what were former U.S. military operations rose to unprecedented levels. Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops. Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds, according to an analysis by the Financial Times that was published Tuesday. The No. 1 recipient? Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR), which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), in 2007. The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg. Who were Nos. 2 and 3? Agility Logistics (KSE:AGLTY) of Kuwait and the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Together, these firms garnered $13.5 billion of U.S. contracts. As private enterprise entered the war zone at unprecedented levels, the amount of corruption ballooned, even if most contractors performed their duties as expected. According to the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the level of corruption by defense contractors may be as high as $60 billion. Disciplined soldiers that would traditionally do many of the tasks are commissioned by private and publicly listed companies. Even without the graft, the costs of paying for these services are higher than paying government employees or soldiers to do them because of the profit motive involved. No-bid contracting - when companies get to name their price with no competing bid - didn't lower legitimate expenses. (Despite promises by President Barack Obama to reel in this habit, the trend toward granting favored companies federal contracts without considering competing bids continued to grow, by 9 percent last year, according to the Washington Post.) Even though the military has largely pulled out of Iraq, private contractors remain on the ground and continue to reap U.S. government contracts. For example, the U.S. State Department estimates that taxpayers will dole out $3 billion to private guards for the government's sprawling embassy in Baghdad. The costs of paying private and publicly listed war profiteers seem miniscule in light of the total bill for the war. Last week, the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University said the war in Iraq cost $1.7 trillion dollars, not including the $490 billion in immediate benefits owed to veterans of the war and the lifetime benefits that will be owed to them or their next of kin.

Publisher’s Clearing House commercials that show average U.S. citizens winning giant checks can be seen on almost any channel, any time of day. Well, Jamaican scammers have taken advantage of Publisher’s Clearing House brand (and other major prize companies), and are duping thousands of American senior citizens out of millions of dollars. In recent years, an estimated $1 billion has been bilked out of Americans. This “lotto scam,” as it has been coined, is a multinational fraud scheme directed at elderly US citizens by Jamaican organized crime members. Scammers target senior citizens, whom the vast majority of have been white, duping them into believing that they have won large amounts of money. The seniors are then encouraged to send money, ostensibly tax payments, via electronic means which ends up in the hands of a local Jamaican syndicate. Last week Jamaican lottery scammers were the focus of a special hearing by the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging, which is co-chaired by Senator Susan Collins of Maine. Maine is one of the states where a large number of people have been cheated out of large fortunes by lotto scammers. Senator Collins believes that the various Jamaican governments have done little over the past five years to stop the Jamaican scammers. U.S law enforcement officials believe that every day more than 30,000 calls are made from Jamaica’s 876 area code in an attempt to defraud American citizens. The scams are considered cyber fraud because many of the connections involve VoIP or voice over Internet Protocol, which allows frequent number changes and the ability to disguise the origin of the call. The Jamaican and U.S. governments set up a joint task force in 2009 called Project JOLT, the “Jamaican Operations Linked to Telemarketing” to stop the schemes. But the problem has gotten worse. Complaints in the U.S. have increased dramatically every year and even the most conservative estimates put the yearly take from Jamaican scams at $300 million, up from some $30 million in 2009. U.S. congress persons and officials have begun increasing to apply pressure to the Jamaican government to resolve the problem. And the Jamaican government has responded—passing a new bill targeting the scammers. The law recently passed by Jamaica's House of Representatives, will be taken up Friday by the Senate. Justice Minister Mark Golding said he expects enforcement of the law to begin by the end of this month. National Security Minister Peter Bunting told reporters that the law reform act will result in a "vastly accelerated number of successful prosecutions" of swindlers who have made the island a center for cross-border telemarketing fraud. Jamaican authorities have already seized bundles of cash, hundreds of computers and more than 120 cars in various operations to dismantle Jamaica's lottery scam rings, Bunting said. Hundreds of people have been arrested and some have been convicted on lesser offenses. But convictions have been remarkably few, largely due to big gaps in the country's laws. "We recognized this activity (raids and seizures) was largely disrupting the lotto scam activities but we were not getting the convictions," Bunting said. To solve this dilemma, the Justice Ministry crafted a bill targeting advanced fee fraud, identity theft and dishonest use of technology for accessing financial accounts. It also prohibits making threats and coercing victims over the phone. Beefed-up penalties could result in 20-year sentences in some cases. While Jamaican authorities have began to demonstrate much judicial vigor, the Jamaican people may have a different perception of the problem altogether. Take Dancehall superstar Vbyz Kartel 2012 release “Reparations” featuring Gaza Slim, for example:

Understanding the cunning of Western man, and his use of rhetorical ethics, I find it hard to accept that the use of a devil character in the History Channel miniseries The Bible, that looked like an older Barack Obama, is a coincidence. History Channel aired the latest episode of the popular series on Sunday evening, with Morocco's Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni playing the part of the devil. The History Channel said producers of the show, which takes viewers through the stories of the Bible's Old and New Testaments, had no intent to cast an actor who looks like Obama as Satan, and that any resemblance was coincidental. "This is utter nonsense," Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, executive producers of The Bible, said in a statement. The actor who played Satan "is a highly acclaimed Moroccan actor," the producers said. "He has previously played parts in several biblical epics – including satanic characters long before Barack Obama was elected as our president."

Didn't they, the producers of The Bible see the resemblance and think about the fall-out? Of all the possible ways Satan could look, he just happens to have Africoid features and resembles the present U.S. president, who have been constantly demonized by the conservative press? Why isn't the devil red and black as he is typically represented? Why isn't he white like Jesus and all the other biblical characters are? This would be historically inaccurate as the Greeks and Romans are the only people who would came close to being white in that period in that part of the world, be at least it would be consistent. With that being said, still, given the history of Western man, his use of the subliminal, his racism, his politics, would anybody put it past him? I don't trust them, and it's not personal--it's historical.

P.S. Below is another example of this racist, subliminal games they play. Why did Lebron have to growl? The comparison to King is obvious though the magazine denied it. Sound familiar? The funny thing is that the movie King Kong was originally about the great Afrikan American boxing champion, Jack Johnson, who was known to flagrantly sport white women during the heyday of Jim Crow and lynching.

This weekend I had the honor and privilege to present a paper entitled, "Rethinking Kemet: a Cosmological Perspective," at the 30th annual Ancient Kemetic Studies Conference held at Howard University. The conference was given by the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC). ASCAC provides a body of knowledge that continuously contributes to the rescue, reconstruction, and restoration of African history and culture. Their purpose is to promote the study of Afrikan civilizations for the development of an Afrikan world view. These goals and ideas are identical with those presented in my book, Distorted Truths: The Bastardization of Afrikan Cosmology, so you can imagine that I was as happy as a fat rat in a cheese factory. The paper I presented at the conference, which is also posted on this website is rather long, so instead of reading it I summarized the basic arguments.

The paper addresses the ideas of four pioneering intellectuals, two Afrikan, and two European. Its purpose is to point out conceptual errors in their ideas regarding Kemetic thought. My points of contention are the following: First, that the generally accepted Kemetic attitude toward the human body is at odds with the universal view held on the continent today, a view that holds the body is an essential and foundational aspect of the soul and does not imprison it; Second, that the various temples and centers of learning in Kemet do not form different philosophical schools or competing ideologies but are parts of an unitary cosmology based on the Memphite Theology; Third, that the idea of the fall of humanity or a desire to return to the source (of existence) is anathema to Afrikan thought, Kemetic thought included; Lastly, that the Kemetic world unlike the Greek world did not emerge from chaos but like a seed contained the inherent order within that it would later manifest. I am not in disagreement with the general thesis of these writers, I am just pointing our specific points of disagreement. The first argument is directed at George G.M. James, the second at Cheikh Anta Diop, the third at R.A. Schwaller De Lubicz and Gerald Massey, while the fourth is generally assumed by a number of authors.

My presentation was well received and there were a number of good questioned asked. If you have the time and inclination then please read the entire article, it's 20 pages. Also tomorrow, March 19th I begin an online study group based on Distorted Truths. It will be part of the CPRreggae evening suite, the program is called Social Living. It airs every Tuesday from 7-10pm @cprreggae.org. Tune-in, listen-up, participate. I'll be joined by senior co-host Carlyle McKetty.

The story of St Patrick is one of Christianity's victory over Celtic traditional religion, which was a form of religious expression that retain many Afrikan elements. Why do I say Afrikan elements, for two reasons: we know their religious practices contained Nature worship; there existed many deities that were communicated with through rituals; the use of sacrifice was fundamental, animal and supposedly human; they believed that the soul survived death; reverence for the sun; and they believed in reincarnation. (Often the Celtic religion is refereed to as Druidism, named after their priesthood and religious leaders.) And all these ideas can be found in traditional Afrikan spirituality. You say, well, they can be found in the spiritual beliefs of other people as well, and I would agree. However, we know that the Afrikan phenotypes were still present, perhaps even dominant, among the early Celts because the Greek historian Ephorus of Cyme (c. 405 BCE) reports that the Celts were Blacks or Ethiopians, and the Roman senator and historian Tacitus wrote in 80 AD, that many of the Celts and Picts were as dark as Ethiopians. It is interesting that Ephorus and Tacitus writing nearly 500 years apart both describe the Celts as Ethiopians. Now this is not what we envision when we thinks of the Red-haired white-skinned Irish. But both linguistic and genetics supports the claims of these two ancient writers.According to Celtic historian, Father O’Growney, the original Celts came from Iberia, and they were eventually supplanted by the Gauls, who emanated from the area around present-day Belgium. We are able to connect the Iberians or the Basques and their language to the Niger-Congo languages. In fact, Dr. C.J.K. Cambell-Dunn has established that the language spoken by the Basque was a substratum of the Niger-Congo languages. He has found that the Niger-Congo and Basque languages share personal pronouns, numerals and vocabulary items. Next, there are genetic ties between the Basque and Niger-Congo speakers as both groups share SRY10831.1, YAP, M2,M173(xR1a,R1b3), E3*-P2, E3b2-M81, haplogroups, which originated in western North Afrika or central West Afrika. But I caution writers who are quick to claim an Afrikan heritage for the Celts. My argument is not concern with the skin color or even the race of the people, but their worldview and culture, and how much of it they retained. The early Celts in their phenotype and religious practices we can clearly see are derived from Afrika, however, culturally, they seemed to have discarded a number of cultural features, that according to Diop's Two Cradle Theory, suggest the Celts of that period were already, in a zone of confluence, leaning heavily towards the northern cradle. Why? Because the two cradle met when the Iberian Celts were overcome by the conquering Gauls. Eventually the Afrikan phenotype and cultural remnants would disappear, particularly the religious elements, and in this regard St Patrick played an important role. His conversion of the Celts to Christianity struck at the remaining elements of this Afrikan cultural survival. So, what did St Patrick really do? St Patrick removed the remaining elements of Afrikan spirituality, that were retained in Celtic Druidism. Thus, his significance lies in his ultimate triumph over Afrikan thought, which I would argue was already in a perverted form. And St Patrick's snakes refers to the people who were the worshippers of the snakes, who were the descendants of the Iberians Celts. You see, St Patrick never chased any real snakes out of Ireland because researchers have now demonstrated that Ireland has never had any snakes. So the next time you hear that St Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland, know that it is symbolic and that he chased people out—the cultural descendants of the Afrikan Iberians who first settled the area and became known as the Celts.

Testimonies of jailed Eritrean migrants and asylum seekers (collected by a local NGO) say officials at the Saharonim prison in Israel’s Southern Negev desert are coercing them to sign “voluntary repatriation” forms.In one of the many testimonies a 28-year-old Eritrean detainee reported being repeatedly visited by a translator telling her to accept deportation to a third country (Uganda).“He said we would not be free from the prison and we can only go to Uganda or Eritrea. I was frustrated and depressed. I do not want to go to Uganda. Today they called me and gave me a handwritten form in Tigrinya which said: ‘I came from Eritrea to Israel illegally and now I want to go to Uganda voluntarily. To do this I would like the Eritrean embassy to issue me a passport and all the necessary documents.’ They asked me to sign it and wanted to take my picture on video. I refused.”Israel is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention but does not recognize Eritreans as refugees, although it does not officially deport Eritreans and allows them to stay in Israel under a group defence (temporary group protection).Staff at the Hotline for Migrant Workers, who collected the testimonies, say the government is forcibly trying to repatriate Eritreans: “These people have no access to a refugee status determination process, they are detained under the new amendment to the infiltration law that came into effect in June 2012, which allows detention of of African migrants of as Israel calls them ‘infiltrators’ for an unlimited amount of time; now they are told they will never be allowed to leave the prison and their only option is to go back to Uganda/Eritrea. How can this be considered voluntary?” said one staff member.The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) representative in Israel, William Tall, said the Ministry of Interior made an attempt to offer relocation to some 23 Eritreans to Uganda but without any result so far.At the end of February he told Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz there was nothing voluntary about this process.One Eritrean, Tesfamihret Habtemariam, was reportedly deported from Israel earlier this month and is now in detention at Cairo airport after five years in Israel, and may be returned to Eritrea.UNHCR advises against repatriating Eritrean nationals because of the likelihood of their being punished on return to their country.Israel’s StanceUnder an updated Anti-Infiltration law passed in January 2012, all illegal border crossers are labelled “infiltrators” and can be detained for up to three years.The Eritreans being held in detention camps in the south are generally not notified about their right to claim asylum or given the application forms needed to do this, report NGOs.On 18 February, official documents from the Israeli assembly, the Knesset, quote Interior Minister Eli Yishai saying deportations (by definition forced) were not yet taking place.He said more than a 1,000 nationals of northern Sudan and Eritrea had already left voluntarily and said he hoped a lot more would decide to leave.“And if it won’t be voluntary leave, it will be involuntary – to their country or to a different third country, and there is still no third country to sign an agreement with, but I hope we do find other third countries that we’ll have an agreement with, and we can transfer the infiltrators from here, from the Land of Israel, to their country or to another country, whether it is done willingly or not.”Last week the Israel’s Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein sent a letter widely reported in the local press to the director of the Interior Ministry’s Population, Immigration and Border Authority, Amnon Ben Ami, saying that under no circumstances should Eritrean nationals in Israeli custody be sent “to any destination outside Israel’s borders” until he (Weinstein) further clarifies these legal issues.

The following is an excerpt from a book, that was once separately published as Crimes of the Pope. I just thought it would be interesting to see some of the misdeeds that holders of this high Christian office have done over the centuries. The posting today is meant more for perusal than a serious reading. At any rate, if must be remembered that even the more recent popes have shady backgrounds that are often obscured from the general public. I have not presented the entire chapter (6) of the book, Crimes of Christianity, but a substantial part of it. Notice that very few of these crimes involve child sex abuse as these are more recently concerns. These crimes do include peculation, theft, cruelty, murder, fornication, adultery, and incest, as well as others, especially the commissioning of the European slave Trade, often innocuously called the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The first pope to get involved in slaving, was Nicholas V who issued the bulls "Dum Diversas" (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455), that essentially sanctioned the purchase of black slaves from "the infidel," indicating the Saracens or Muslims (Arabs). It has been argued that collectively the two bulls issued by the pope gave the Portuguese the rights to acquire slaves along the Afrikan coast by force or trade. The concessions given in them were confirmed by bulls issued by later popes, such as Callixtus III (Inter Caetera quae in 1456), Sixtus IV (Aeterni regis in 1481), and Leo X (1514), and they became the models for subsequent bulls issued by Pope Alexander VI: Eximiae devotionis (3 May 1493), Inter Caetera (4 May 1493) and Dudum Siquidem (23 September 1493), in which he conferred similar rights to Spain relating to the newly-discovered lands in the Americas. However, father Bartolomé de las Casas was the person who through his repeated suggestions of replacing Indian with Afrikan slave labor, influence the direction of the slave trade, thereby supplanting Indian enslavement with Afrikan. Even though he regretted this position towards the end of his life and included an apology in his History of the Indies, Afrikan American abolitionist David Walker reminds use that Las Casas is largely responsible for the institution of the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.Regarding child sex abuse, the subject is more complicated. As I stated in an earlier blog, Christianity developed in the Greco-Roman milieux, which was Pansexual and homophilic to say the least. In this setting certain "homosexual" practices were socially accepted, especially the pederastic relationship of an adult male with a youth, or in the case of Rome, an adult male with a slave boy. What was less acceptable, at times even reviled, was the sexual relationship between to male adults. Often, what we take as prohibitions or condemnations against homosexuality are specifically aimed at adult-adult relationship and not adult-boy relationships. Furthermore, though a sexual dalliance between an adult and a boy, often extended into the latter's adulthood, the rule was that all males would eventually marry and sire children. Thus, the modern idea of a male couple who prefer homosexual acts to heterosexual acts and refrained from marriage or sexual acts with women entirely, was alien to Greco-Roman culture. When we speak of Greco-Roman “homosexuality” and the modern construct, we are speaking about oranges and apples. But once the church began to forbid marriage within the clergy, same-sex behavior between adults and boys probably took on more permanence. But this relationship did not constitute a crime. I would ask, when did the homosexual behavior that has been being exposed for decades now, begin? Did some historical event or trend “give birth” to it or has it always been a part of church “culture”? I would argue that it is a logical consequence of the entrenched doctrinal and historical misogyny that came to dominant Christian thinking in the early centuries. In my Distorted Truths, I making the point that this was the basis of the clash between the Valentinian Gnostics and the Orthodoxy, the then two leading schools of Christianity. One group women-loving, the other women-hating, and unfortunately we know which group prevailed. Therefore, to answer my own question, where or when this is same-sex behavior originate: It had been there all along--part of the church inheritance from the Greco-Roman world.